1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of website optimisation, particularly using a real-time website optimisation system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The way in which users interact with a website is highly dependent on the exact content, layout and/or interaction sequences. Even quite small changes in for example the layout, or the graphics used, or the way content is reached, can have a dramatic impact on:                how useable the website is        how long users stay reading a page        how likely it is a user will progress to deeper pages within a site or select links within a page or to view or buy items.        more generally, how effectively users will interact with the site.        
Consequently, it is very useful to be able to remotely modify or alter the website's content, layout and/or interaction sequences then to measure how these changes impact user behaviour. This enables the content, layout and/or interaction sequences to be optimised for clusters of users (segmentation) and or each user behaviour patterns (behavioural targeting). The phrase ‘content, layout and/or interaction sequences’ is generalised in this specification to the phrase ‘data and/or functions and/or content assets’. The broad objective of website optimisation can be described as conversion management.
Website optimisation typically includes A/Bn, Multi-variate testing and personalization campaigns which alter the data, functions and/or content assets in a website. These alterations cause variances in visitor experiences, behavioural responses and subsequent conversion rates. Control groups are used to benchmark conversion rates for different visitor experiences; conversion rates are a metric of the number of user objectives completed divided by the number of times a specific variation of content is generated. Personalisation campaigns includes targeting, banner promotions and offers, product selections, functional navigation, form handling/processing, user experience.
Optimising a website requires a website optimisation system—typically a remote computer programmed to interact with (i.e. be integrated with) the server hosting the web pages of the website.
Previously, integration between a website using a website optimisation system has required specific JavaScript® integration between the remote computer and each individual page to be tested and altered; this is not only complex, but slow because it requires custom code for each web page, and also for each test (JavaScript® is a registered trademark of ORACLE AMERICA, INC., 500 ORACLE PARKWAY REDWOOD SHORES CALIFORNIA 94065). The custom code hard codes the specific page controls required for each page, which in turn allows the data and/or functions and/or content assets on each page to be altered and optimised. Because custom code is required for each campaign and iteration, refresh cycles govern the implementation timeframes; and restricted access rules, to organisations pre-production servers, normally block specialist external technicians access to source code. These specialist technicians often operate in separate agencies from an organisation's technical group. These factors significantly inflate the human resource requirements and the speed at which campaigns and iteration code can be deployed. Additionally any code implemented needs to be removed once a campaign is complete before another can start on the same page(s). These time and resource constraints cause a relatively high the cost of deployment and timeframes which have to be considered when management analyse the cost benefits of website optimisation programs.
“Website optimisation” as used in this specification differs from website analytics because in website analytics systems, there is no optimisation as such of the target website—i.e. there is no altering one or more of: the data, functions or content assets of web pages in the website.